4 ms·

It depends on what it is. Giving people money to buy food is much easier and cheaper than setting up and administering a system to provide food for people, mon

It depends on what it is. Giving people money to buy food is much easier and cheaper than setting up and administering a system to provide food for people, monitor compliance, etc. Food is available just about anywhere from an enormous number of vendors, producers, suppliers, etc. There's no reason to get government too closely involved there, except of course for food-safety inspections and the like, which we already have. Food is a very competitive industry. Healthcare, on the other hand, is totally different, and we're already seeing how trying to use a free-market approach there just doesn't work. This is an industry that needs some kind of nationalization (like single-payer coverage, plus a lot of regulation to keep costs down). No one calls up 3 different ERs and ambulance companies when they have a heart attack to see which one offers the best price and service.

monknomo 10y ago
I'm on board with central healthcare. I think the government excels at organizing people and distributing people and tasks across the country, but I'm pretty skeptical of their ability to handle inventory or do construction that doesn't lean on private industry (I mean, I'm sure they could, it's just not what the government is set up to do right now) Of course, the military is a great logistics machine, but it's also a specialist branch of the government
- Grishnakh 10y ago
  The military is great at logistics, but it also doesn't do any construction (unless it's on a battlefield): all that stuff is contracted out, as is manufacturing of weapons. They have a big hand in the nitty-gritty details of these things, but ultimately they're done by private companies. Government doesn't even need to be in the healthcare business per se: that can all be done by private providers. Government's role is to regulate it to keep costs down (similar to however they do it in places like Belgium), and to provide the funding. If Belgium can do it, we should be able to do it too. But maybe we need to hire the Belgians to help us set up the system....

monknomo 10y ago

I'm on board with central healthcare. I think the government excels at organizing people and distributing people and tasks across the country, but I'm pretty skeptical of their ability to handle inventory or do construction that doesn't lean on private industry (I mean, I'm sure they could, it's just not what the government is set up to do right now) Of course, the military is a great logistics machine, but it's also a specialist branch of the government

Grishnakh 10y ago
The military is great at logistics, but it also doesn't do any construction (unless it's on a battlefield): all that stuff is contracted out, as is manufacturing of weapons. They have a big hand in the nitty-gritty details of these things, but ultimately they're done by private companies. Government doesn't even need to be in the healthcare business per se: that can all be done by private providers. Government's role is to regulate it to keep costs down (similar to however they do it in places like Belgium), and to provide the funding. If Belgium can do it, we should be able to do it too. But maybe we need to hire the Belgians to help us set up the system....